


rotten soul

by Calamitatum



Category: Curse of Strahd - Fandom, Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: Body Horror, Character Study, Death, Gen, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25314085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calamitatum/pseuds/Calamitatum
Summary: In his dreams, he burns alive on that dark mountain road. In his dreams, there is no tunnel, no coffin of amber, no soundless voice speaking from within.Felled and left to the elements, his body begins to rot.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	rotten soul

**Author's Note:**

> _A man of death will forsake his dark lord to serve your cause. Beware! He has a rotten soul._
> 
> [See endnotes for detailed warnings.]

The Dark Lord comes for him in the night. 

Arrigal jolts awake. The frigid air makes a cloud of his breath, glistening and suspended in the pale, silvery moonlight that cuts through the vardo and drapes shadows like cobwebs across its corners. His eyes rove the darkness and find the wagon’s back window open--the source of his glacial intruder.

He stills his breath and strains his ears for the shift, the soundless presence of whatever woke him. The silence lies that he is alone.

He slips to his feet with practiced ease. His feet find their boots, his hands to sword and sheath. A second knife makes its way into his waistband, so instinctive hardly an ounce of thought goes into the motion. The vardo neither creaks nor rocks beneath him, revealing nothing to whoever surely awaits him beyond.

“No need for all that.”

Arrigal flinches like a taut rope snapped, but there is only a gentle laugh to meet the staccato of his heart. He wrestles back control of himself and drops to one knee, head bowed. “My lord.”

His small vardo fashions a strange sight of the Dark Lord--winter pale skin stark in the gray moonlight, fangs glistening like jewels of a crown. He wears the shadows like a cloak, as regal as if he were lounging in his great, terrible throne.

Arrigal realizes he’s staring, and forces his eyes back to the Devil’s feet. His untied hair makes a curtain of his face, unwashed and unkempt, and he knows his blood must stink of fear. It’s been many years since the Devil paid him visit in the flesh.

“A pleasant evening,” the Dark Lord remarks. “How very quaint a home your hovel makes. Your brother has made good work of his tillage since the passing of your elders.” A cruel smile works its way into the words. “And how kind of him to continue to share it with those poor, miserable elves.”

Arrigal drains his voice of all inflection and says to the floor, “It is our home only by the grace of your allowance, my lord.”

Cold fingers brush the hair from his eyes, deceptively soft as they raise and tilt his chin. After a moment, the claws find rest atop his pulse. “I’ve a task for you.”

Arrigal holds the pose, neck extended as though awaiting the swift blow of a guillotine. “It is my honour to serve.”

“Invaders plague my kingdom. Though once entertaining, they grow tiresome. They’ve taken advantage of my grace and hospitality for far too long,” the Dark Lord laments, and drags his claws lightly over Arrigal’s skin. The sensation lingers like a ghost, racing down his spine and raising the fine hairs on the backs of his arms. “I want them exterminated like the vermin they continue to prove to be.”

Arrigal finds the Devil’s eyes at last--the calm, fixed point of his stare dangerously still. Peripherally, he realizes it was not the cold that woke him, but the silence. The camp is too quiet. No crackle of fire or drunken late night murmurs, no shifting horses or thunderous snores from Luvash’s neighbouring vardo. He spares a moment to wonder what’s become of them, then, face a blank canvas, repeats, “It is my honour.”

The words are met without reaction. Then, something tugs down at the corners of the Devil’s fanged mouth. 

Uncertainty lances through Arrigal’s gut. “My lord?”

The silence continues, profound and immovable. The Devil’s fingers return to his neck, slow and considering. Distant emotion swims behind his eyes, like the shadow of something lurking beneath dark waters. A single claw punctures the skin--a thin, surgical incision--and the heat of Arrigal’s blood races out to meet the frozen night. 

“I grow bored, Arrigal. Truly, I do,” the Devil says at last. There is something weary, something nearly _human_ in the words.

Arrigal swallows and feels his throat work against the Devil’s touch. Their conversations--already rare enough--have never once strayed to the Devil’s _feelings._ Arrigal isn’t sure how to get them back on script. Haltingly, he tries, “Might my lord divulge to his lowly servant the location of this infestation?”

A flicker moves across the Dark Lord’s face. “They pass through the West Barovia Gate at dusk tomorrow.”

Arrigal nods. “They shall not live to see the walls of Vallaki.”

The Devil blinks, and the strange mask falls. The distance drains away, leaving him once more cold and regal. Familiar. 

When he smiles, it is no longer human.

* * *

In the morning, windchimes murmur in the breeze, carrying the rich scent of mountain pine and the warmth of roasted meats. The skin of Arrigal’s neck is whole, smooth but for a faint stubble. The fires crackle, the horses snuff, and Luvash’s voice is rough from last night’s snores.

He knows far better than to hope it was a dream. 

He keeps himself busy--sharpens and coats his blades, oils his saddle and mends the old holes in his riding cloak. He drinks heavily from the casks outside the hilltop tent and savours the bitter taste, the way the wine coats his tongue and softens his thoughts. The elves give him an even wider berth than usual, and he can’t help but imagine how they must sense the stench of the Devil, the stench of death. He keeps his head low as he slips like a whisper around camp, preparing for his journey. Despite his efforts, at several moments, he glances up to find Arabelle watching, her young eyes dark and terribly wise. The unhappy slope of her mouth kicks at something behind his ribs.

Unlike the women, Arabelle needn’t consult the cards to see what the strands of fate have in store for him. She knows. Where he’s going, what he’s to do. They don’t speak of it, of course. They never do. But knowing--always knowing--must be a hideous curse. 

He saddles up a mare, an older thing nicknamed _Lada_ by the children. A reliable standardbred with a brownish, speckled coat--easy to ride and even easier to camouflage in the dark wood and deadfall. More importantly, she’s reliable, always calm in the face of whatever prowling spies the Devil sends along for these little shows. Arrigal isn’t fool enough to doubt he’ll be watching this one too.

His thoughts take a sharp edge, spiteful curses exploding in full colour behind his eyes. For surely the Devil is far stronger than any fools unwise enough to have caught his eye. There is no corner of the realm unknown to him, and no force within it powerful enough to oppose him. What’s a single man to do that the Dark Lord himself cannot evoke with the flick of his undead wrist?

Arrigal bites his tongue on these treacherous thoughts, stills his tremors into fists, and drains his mind with a practiced exhale. Whether the Dark Lord means to test these foolish adventurers or to test _him_ is no business of his. He has spoken and Arrigal will answer. The day that he doesn’t is the day he ceases to be of use. And as the Devil made clear only hours ago, broken toys are easily discarded.

* * *

He makes camp on the southeastern shores of Lake Zarovich, leading Lada to a well-earned drink as he casts a final check over his blades. The mist-shrouded sun begins its descent, silhouetting Mount Baratok and painting weak rays of watery orange across the glistening lake. 

Arrigal allows a moment to close his eyes against its pitiful sight, and imagines he can feel the heat against his skin, the pale glow against the backs of his eyelids warming him in fractions.

Somewhere, a wolf howls, long and low. It echoes down the valley and between the mountains, triggering a chorus of response calls that seem to overflow the forest. His forest, he thinks, unbidden. For all that the Vistani area people without a land, their memories still hang like ghosts between these trees, the snow-capped mountains and stormcloud skies of Barovia painted in the words of their ancestral songs. The valley’s rivers line his people’s veins, the creak and sway of rusted wagon wheels along its winding roads the lullabies that rock their cradles.

The howl comes again, closer now, and Lada stamps, tail flicking uneasily. Arrigal opens his eyes and reassembles his thoughts. He leads her back from the shores, to a thicket beyond view of the road, and hitches her to a sturdy tree. He runs soothing fingers through her mane, whispers that they’ll be finished soon. After this, he promises, they can rest.

* * *

Night falls, the mists all but eclipsing the starlit sky, and Arrigal makes his way eastward. He traces the sloping road from the cover of the treeline, close enough to follow its bends without being seen from them. He’d hardly need the moonlight--he could traverse these woods blinded--the cedarwood smell and soft crunch of last year’s deadfall underfoot echoing with memory. 

Up ahead--the faint glow of torches.

He stills, and slides his shortsword from the sheath, the sound masked in the breeze. The lights disappear around a turn, and he waits, counts the paces until they reappear, several dozen feet closer. Their silhouettes are bulky under their traveling gear, shadows elongated and dancing behind them in the wind-battered torchlight. Three humans--one robed and two armored--and a smaller, foreign-looking creature whose legs move twice as fast to keep up with the others. Halfling, perhaps gnomish. 

Four against one. But they are not people. They are outsiders. Invaders. Vermin.

He breathes, settles into the trance-like calm before battle, and considers. Spellcasters are unpredictable, and much harder to counter with arms alone. They can twist the mind and reverse his intentions, lock his limbs in place or spill fear into his thoughts. Worst still are the ones who, with a touch, can nullify the damage done by his blades.

He turns to his second target. He knows some of the little folk have the vision of elves, allowing them to peer through darkness as though it teems with light and colour. He should be thankful not see the hardier dwarven kind among them--even the most deadly poison rarely so much as turns them ill, rendering his blades pedestrian.

He shifts his attention to the armored ones. The taller of the two leads the procession, broad shouldered, steps confidant. The one in the rear is slimmer, their shadow misshapen from the bow slinged over their shoulders. An archer. 

Arrigal nods, the third target decided.

He waits as they approach, feels their eyes pass straight through the darkness that cloaks him. The glare of their torches sings like a beacon, blinding them beyond its radius--a flare in the night, marking them for dead.

He exhales, and steps between them.

His blade arcs through the first human’s neck without flair. The momentum carries him to the second target, where he finds his mark between the shoulderblades of the smaller creature. He pivots again as bodies and torches fall in tandem, the wet spray of blood sickly warm against his skin, and catches the firelight glint off a swinging blade.

He dodges the worst of it, but feels the bite of split skin across his cheek, narrowly missing his eye. The armored one is faster than he’d thought, her face etched with focused fury. A second attack slashes through his leathers, but Arrigal rights his feet and returns the strike, trading blows in a deadly dance that ends when, from the dark, he hears the _thwang_ of a bow loosened. 

The arrow sinks into his side with an explosion of pain. He grunts and exaggerates the stagger, feinting before he strikes out in a wild stab that glances off the woman’s breastplate with enough force to send her stumbling. He pivots with the swing and hurls his sword into the dark.

The blade catches the archer in the stomach--payment in kind for the arrow. He has no breath with which to feel triumph as the man sinks to his knees--a ferocious scream signals the fighter back on her feet. She lunges and his legs collapse, sending them both to the ground.

He catches her wrist before her sword finds his eye, but has nothing with which to counter her fist as it cracks across his jaw. Wet tears splash across his cheeks where they’ve fallen from hers, streaking down into the dirt. She _screams,_ primal in her hysteria, and manages one final hit before he twists the knife already between her ribs, reminding her of where she’s sunken her weight.

Her movements stutter and slow, body convulsing as the poison works into her veins. Her pants turn to wheezes, to wretches and gags. She lives just long enough to curse him to hell. 

When it’s done, Arrigal lies limp beneath the corpse. The air reeks of copper and piss as he struggles for breath. Slowly, the wind through the canopy and the forest’s scurrying nightlife penetrate the rush of his pulse. It seems hours pass before he manages to drag himself from beneath her. Blood soaks his clothes and skin, and he shivers from the loss of it.

Trembling hands make slow work of snapping off the arrow, leaving the head in place. It’s not so bad, he sees now--stuck between two ribs before it could sink too deep--but it still flares with every twist and flex of muscle, pain spiking red behind his eyes. He eases to his feet, breath hissing between his teeth, and casts a weary glance over the carnage.

Abandoned torches sputter in the dirt. The light dances off the puddles of blood that stain the path like rain, the distorted reflections making monsters of the twisted corpses. His sword glints faintly where it rests, embedded in the archer’s flesh, some thirty feet away. Walking to retrieve it suddenly seems an impossible task. A wave of exhaustion rocks him, and he sways, eyes slipping closed. When he wrestles himself back, the robed figure catches his eye. The first to die. The curl of her limp fingers rest in a pool of blood, like an outstretched plea for help.

His breath leaves him. In the cover of the dark, she’d looked human. He was wrong. She’s an elf. 

Unbidden, memories flood to mind. The sunken, hollow-eyed elves, huddled around a small fire at the base of the hill. Vistani threads sewn into their robes and Vistani tapestries adorning their homes, and yet none of the life that graces Vistani blood. Though they may hear the stories and sway to the music of their human neighbours, the elves possess none of the colour of their souls, none of the spark of curse-coated tongues, or the calloused fingers that pluck ancestral voices from the strings of fate, or the mastery of the open road and siren song lure of the unknown. The elves know nothing of life, because for centuries, they have been only dying.

He tears his eyes from the woman’s corpse, suddenly ashamed, and for no reason he can place. What was he to do? Deny his lord? Capture the bitch instead of kill her, drag her back for Kasimir to--

No. He cuts the thought off, stamps it into the bloodstained dirt. The Dark Lord ordered her dead. He spoke and Arrigal answered. The day that he doesn’t is the day he ceases to be of use. Broken toys are--

Fingers twitch, casting tiny ripples in the pool. 

Arrigal stills. Doesn't dare look.

With staggering speed, she lurches up. He starts back and the arrowhead screams at the motion. He stumbles, opens his mouth to--to-- he doesn’t know-- but she’s faster, lips already moving, face etched with pain and terror and the sickly glow of the arcane. 

Bloodstained fingers ignite the air. With a blinding explosion of fire, snakes of flame slither across Arrigal’s skin, constricting, searing. It sings through his veins, sinks into his open-mouthed scream, boiling blood and sizzling flesh. It consumes him, utterly. 

In the darkness, Arrigal burns.

* * *

There is the dark. And the cold. And a silence that sits beneath his skin like a ghost, an imperceptible weight. It cloaks him completely, mind and body. He is hazy with it, distant. Awareness stretches and bends around him, murky like the fog that clouds the early morning--that delirious, infinitesimal moment between night and day, when one can fool themself that the sun might finally-- _finally_ \--rise over the Balinok Mountains.

He raises his arms, feels no ache, no torn flesh. His fingers find stone, nails scraping a thin layer of frost. He feels his breath, feels the heat of it dispersing across his cheeks in the frigid air. He traces the wall, the floor. Stone, and more stone, hollowed out to form a tunnel--all freezing to the touch.

He thinks he should be afraid. He feels only numb, distinctly defenseless.

He begins to walk. He knows not why, or to where, but the tunnel’s endless darkness beckons, pulling him down into its depths as surely as a fallen star plummets to the earth. The frost crunches underfoot, and even in the utter black of nothingness, he can feel the curve of the tunnel, the steady downward slope, as though descending into the belly of some ancient, unknowable beast. 

From beyond the tunnel--voices. Warped and distorted. Luvash, he thinks. Then Arabelle. His mother. The Devil. They whisper, laugh, scream. They plead his name. They spit it like a curse.

He walks for what may be minutes, may be hours. The echoes grow with every step--impossibly, always louder, yet never loud enough. There is a ferver to them, he thinks. Something eager and cruel. Something hungry.

He begins to slow as a distant, animal sort of fear creeps over him, sitting like ice in his gut. He begins to fear what awaits him at the end of the tunnel. He begins to understand that he may be the focus of its hunger.

And then, he sees it.

At the end of the hall sits a massive, coffin-shaped slab of amber. It gives a faint glow, the light soft and rippled with movement--a hazy warmth which glitters off the stone and frost, not unlike the flicker of candlelight.

There is a face, he thinks--or something like one--etched into the amber’s surface. Its features are haunting and inhuman, its eyes both too few and too many, its mouth open somewhere between a grotesque scream and a cunning smile. And yet it is strangely… alluring. Familiar. Like an itch, a name on the tip of his tongue. It seems to swallow him whole, the bulk of it eating up the narrow darkness between them, and Arrigal can’t help but drift towards it, hands outstretched with an indescribable yearning. A desperation.

A hunger.

Without sight, the face fixes its amber gaze upon him. Without movement, it speaks.

Without sound, it makes him an offer.

* * *

Lada all but drags his body home, slumped with his feet tied to the stirrups to provent him from falling, bloodied and ragged and numb from the inside out. His fingers are ice cold and entirely uncooperative, his left hand refusing to so much as wrap around the reigns. A steady ache has nestled down in the base of his skull, and he’s forced to ride most of the journey with his eyes squinted closed. Even the feeble light of Barovia blinds him, sending his thoughts spinning.

In the grove outside of camp, he vomits for the fourth time, spitting bile and yesterday’s wine. He cuts himself free of the saddle, but can manage little more than to slump to the ground. He tries to brace himself against a tree, but once again, his arm refuses the command. 

His vision dips, knees buckling. Nausea swims in great waves behind his ribs. He thinks of calling out for help.

Then, for some time after, he thinks nothing at all.

* * *

In his dreams, he burns alive on that dark mountain road. In his dreams, there is no tunnel, no coffin of amber, no soundless voice speaking from within. 

Felled and left to the elements, his body begins to rot.

* * *

When he wakes, Luvash’s face is a cold storm of fury. Impressively, he schools himself just long enough to help Arrigal empty an entire canteen of water. When he’s done choking and coughing, Luvash gently lays him back against the pillows. Then, he strikes him across the face. 

“Bastard.”

Arrigal’s head slumps to the side, pressing fever-flushed skin against the cool silk. “I couldn’t very well have said no,” he pants.

“You could’ve been more careful.”

“But of course.” Even exhaustion can’t mask the bitter edge of his voice. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Joke all you want,” Luvash spits. “You’re going to lose the arm either way.” 

The world goes shuttered and strange. His ears ring as though he’s raced through some great windstorm. “I-- What?”

“This is what your recklessness gets you,” Luvash says. “Do you know who found you like that? Arabelle. _Arabelle._ She was hysteric, trying to drag you through camp like a fuckin’ corpse.”

The words skip through his head like stones across water, refusing to sink in. He makes to tear back the blanket, but only the right arm responds, fumbling and sluggish. Beneath the sheets, the left arm lays, swaddled in bandages from the shoulder to the blue-gray tips of his fingers. 

His heart quickens with unfathomable instinct--not fear, but _disgust,_ the animal impulse of seeing something and _knowing_ it’s infected. Diseased. Rotten.

A thousand questions race to mind, but all he can think of is a dark, cold tunnel, and the piercing amber gaze of something inhuman.

He drags his mind back like boots through mud. Luvash watches, mouth flat and eyes creased in uncharacteristic pity. Arrigal stares back, holds the gaze like it’s a plea. He isn’t sure what he’s asking for.

“Gangrene,” Luvash explains at last. “I’m sorry, brother. There was nothing the healers could do.”

* * *

He’s right about one thing.

The healers both elven and Vistani are at a loss--neither elixir nor spell has the slightest effect. The fever ebbs. The other wounds of the battle settle into distant aches and puckered scars. But the rot remains, puss-filled and rancid, souring the air of every breath.

The strange thing is, Luvash is wrong about the other part.

He doesn’t lose the arm. 

As though a border’s been drawn across his skin, the infection refuses to spread. The healers watch it closely those first few days, preparing to amputate while he regains his strength from the fever. But before the knife can even be raised, a dull throb lances through the arm, so startling it tears a shout from his lips.

Beneath the wet and blackened skin, a sluggish sensation returns. With it comes movement--slow at first, like the lurch of the Dark Lord’s undead minions. But as surely as the seasons pass, finesse finds its way back into his withered fingers. 

And still, the rot does not spread.

The stench, though--the putrid, stomach-turning stench of decay. That lasts.

He masks it as best he can with tobacco smoke and cologne-soaked bandages. Gone are the loose cuts and billowing sleeves of traditional Vistani dress, replaced instead by a stiff collection of buttoned cuffs and leather hunting gloves. And on most days, he can nearly forget.

But sometimes, when he unthinkingly raises a bottle to his lips, or when the wind blows just right, he still catches it. The undeniable scent of death.

* * *

He loses something else in those nebulous months, between relearning to thread needles and grasp knives. Something, he thinks, other than the arm.

It takes him far too long to notice, and longer still to give it shape and substance. He still isn’t sure he can put it to words. He isn’t sure he wants to.

But he begins to suspect that some part of him really did die that night.

He sleeps less and less. What few dreams he does manage oscillate wildly between a sea of flames and an endless, frozen darkness--the details always tumbling from reach upon waking. 

More often, the sleepless nights leave him hazy, lightheaded and slow to react. The first few find him alone at the edge of the camp without memory of having gotten there, silent and still, staring sightlessly into the forest. One morning after he’s found in a similar state--this time a mile south of camp--Luvash takes to spending the night at Arrigal’s side. He plants them both beside the fire with a bottle or two between them, a knot of worry in his brow and the poor distraction of some meandering story on his lips.

Worse still are the nights of restless energy, the way curses rise to his tongue without provocation, and a maddening, inexplicable anger tears up the inside of his ribs like a starving thing. He’s quick to incite argument--with Luvash, with Kasimir, with anyone who dares so much as glance in his direction--and just barely retains enough presence of mind to know better than to unleash it in violence. Without a target, it curls heavily through his veins, simmering like a pot set to boil. Unchecked, it spreads, a little further, every day. Spreads like rot.

For the first time in his life, he finds himself _eager_ for the Dark Lord’s next task. He finds himself drawn to the darkness, to the hunt, to the kill. And more than once, he finds himself drawn to the distant, snow-capped point of Mount Ghakis to the south, his troubled eyes finding rest upon it as though something there whispers to him on the winds.

Weeks turn to months, and the rot neither lessens nor grows. It only sits within him, stalwart, stagnant--a limb that refuses to be severed. Moons wax and wane. Arabelle greets her seventh year. Leaves turn to brilliant red and fall like dying stars. Wine shipments begin to dwindle, and whispers of unrest slip from the wooden walls of Vallaki.

At last, the Dark Lord comes for him in the night. 

Arrigal feels the shift, the Devil’s presence at his back like a shadow with weight. The hunger within him rears its head.

“I’ve have a letter for you to deliver,” the Devil tells him. “New playthings to lure into my mists.”

“It is my honour,” Arrigal says. 

When he smiles, it is no longer human.

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:  
>  \- Moderately graphic violence & gore resulting in death.  
> \- Moderate body horror (gangrene.)  
> \- Super brief mention of vomit.  
> \- Brief allusion to sexual violence against women.**
> 
> Written for the 2020 Curse of Strahd DM subreddit fanfic contest. My genre was horror, and my prompt was: “I saw it in the dark.” 
> 
> Arrigal was my party’s prophesied ally. His card had an interesting reading--[A man of death will forsake his dark lord to serve your cause. Beware! He has a rotten soul.]--which I used to expand his character by adding a connection to the Dark Powers--specifically, Fekre, Queen of Poxes.


End file.
